A recent poll found Americans would prefer a carbon tax to cutting spending for deficit reduction by a huge margin.
Commissioned by Friends of the Earth and conducted by the Mellman Group in December, the poll is the latest evidence that actions on climate change — and efforts to tax or cap carbon emissions specifically — are not the inevitable political losers assumed by beltway pundits. Another recent study by The Yale Project on Climate Change Communication determined that bipartisan majorities of voters felt action on global warming should be a priority, would consider a politicians’ views on the matter when voting, and support regulating carbon as a pollutant.
Among other things, the Friends of the Earth poll found that on the carbon tax:
Voters overwhelmingly prefer it to cutting spending. When presented with two options for reducing the deficit — a carbon tax on “big polluters such as oil, gas, and other companies,” versus spending cuts for “programs like education, Social Security, Medicare and environmental protection” — 67 percent favored the carbon tax. 59 percent favored it “strongly.”